Camera viewing systems are utilized for a large variety of different purposes, including surveillance, inspection, security and remote sensing as well as mainstream applications such as consumer digital imaging and real time video conferencing. The majority of these systems use either a fixed-mount camera with a limited viewing field, or they utilize mechanical pan-and-tilt platforms and mechanized zoom lenses to orient the camera and magnify its image. While a mechanical solution may often be satisfactory when multiple camera orientations and different degrees of image magnification are required, the mechanical platform can be cumbersome, relatively unreliable because of the many moving parts it requires, and it can occupy a significant volume, making such a viewing system difficult to conceal or use in close quarters. As a result, several stationary cameras are often used to provide wide-angle viewing of a workspace.
More recently, camera viewing systems have been developed that perform the electronic equivalent of mechanical pan, tilt, zoom, and rotation functions without the need for moving mechanisms. One method of capturing a video image that can be electronically processed in this manner uses a wide-angle lens such as a fisheye lens. Fisheye lenses permit a large sector of the surrounding space to be imaged all at one time, but they produce a non-linear distorted image as a result. While ordinary rectilinear lenses map incoming light rays to a planar photosensitive surface, fisheye lenses map them to a spherical surface, which is capable of a much wider field of view. In fact, fisheye lenses may even encompass a field of view of 180°. By capturing a larger section of the surrounding space, a fisheye lens camera affords a wider horizontal and vertical viewing angle, provided that the distorted images on the spherical surface can be corrected and transformed in real time.